This is an interesting article but I feel like there’s a big disconnect between the description of Axial’s focus and the companies used as case studies. They all seem to rely on advantages companies developed well after being “early stage” startups, and it’s not clear how you could ascertain those advantages before the companies managed to pull off their various bets. I would imagine most people would agree Merk & Regeneron are well beyond the point where the idea of value investing is tough to do. Perhaps I just am working with a different definition of early stage.